Medicare Background - Term Paper Example

Medicare Background Learning Medicare Background Medicare is defined as a health insurance plan funded by commonwealth. Through this scheme, a subsidized or free healthcare is provided to a country’s population. Traced back in 1945, Harry Truman asked the Congress on the need to legislate the national health insurance establishment plan (Star, 1982). The program changed from being a universal coverage plan to a social security system as developed by administrators of the government. It took two decades of debating upon it because it had opponents who were against the plan.

In 1965, Medicare in the USA was established (Merck, 2007). The plan provided health care to special group of people, the seniors who were above 65 years of age and to the disables bellow 65 years. Medicare and Medicaid bills were then signed into law and ex president Truman was the first to register for the program. The scheme has increasingly covered up to 45 million people by 2007. It cost the federal government lots of billions of dollars to give service claims (Merck, 2007). The federal government administered the Medicare program under the established laws.

The federal government provides financial support for the program. The program is then classified into Parts A, part B, part C, and part D categories. These categories offer different levels of coverage plan to the patients. Part A, of the program covers inpatient medical services including those hospitalized, and those in nursing home in sub cute status. This category of people had certified work requirement and their contribution to the plan was through payment of Medicare tax deducted directly from the employer.

Part B covers outpatient treatments. They pay monthly premiums and gets government subsidy. Part C had an array of health insurance plan from through traditional to network insurance model. Part D was initiated in 2006 and covers outpatients. The benefit here is delivered through plans from the private sector. Enrolment in this part is free just as in part C. (Star, 1982).Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) The centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services were established to control on administration and the smooth running of the healthcare program.

The center was to carryout the nationwide framework to conduct effective background checks on perspective patients who were direct access employees (Theodor, 2000).The employees were beneficiaries of long term care plan (LTC.). LTC services included perfect nursing facilities, provision of skilled nursing, home health agency, and providers of personal care services. The purpose of the program was to find effective, efficient and proper economical rules used in performing background checks. This was to end any bureaucracy and to avoid corruption cases.

CMA also has the role to oversee the implementation through distributing funds to respective states. It gets Federal funds which are available to all states and US territories to be spent on nationwide background check (Theodor, 2000). In 1965, the early funding was partially done by the government. The government could give more financial support to the Medicare plan. There was also personal contribution. In part B of the Medicare program, an individual was entitled to pay $ 3 per month for the scheme initially (Oberlander, 2003).

From 1960s, the nation has been striving to control healthcare cost. Much has not been realized hence raising the question of reduction of health cost by the existing American Government (Oberlander, 2003). There was an effort named as the ``advent of managed care” by 1980s. This seamed to generate savings but the healthcare has since exhausted the savings. The approach now is on the design of suitable policy measures to curd the high healthcare cost.ReferencesMerck (2007). Public Policy Position: Medicare.

Retrieved from www.merck.com/corporate-responsibility/.policy/approach.htmlOberlander, J. (2003). The Political Life of Medicine. Chicago: University of Chicago press.Theodor, R.M. (2000). The Politics of Medicine. New Brunswick, NB: Transaction publishers.Star, P. (1982).The Social Transformation of American Medicine. Chicago: Chicago University press.